Sunday, July 9, 2017

Stuff I Ate

It's been a busy couple of weeks with lots of meals at restaurants and probably not enough cooking at home. I love dining out, but some weeks, it feels like I don't get much time in the kitchen. I buy so much food every couple weeks when I get groceries, and I plan to cook everything. I WANT to cook everything. But my social life tends to revolve around restaurants, and so it's hard to find balance.

Anyway, here are a few meals I did manage to cook at home over the past few weeks. I woke up last Saturday craving a Vegan Omelet, so I whipped up a quick one with Vegan Egg and stuffed with Hilary's Eat Well Apple Maple Sausage, bell pepper, tomato, onion, and Daiya cheddar. Served with air-fried "roasted" potatoes.

Dinner from a box! I made some So Delicious Vegan Mac & Cheese and added frozen peas and carrots. Served with a salad.

I had some leftover Peanut Butter Tempeh and Miso Tahini BBQ Sauce from the No Meat Athlete Cookbook. Plus, leftover collard greens. So I made some I Heart Keenwah quinoa and created a Tempeh Peanut & Greens Bowl. Yum!

There's a section in the No Meat Athlete Cookbook on different ways to use leftovers. They suggested using leftovers from the Breakfast Hummus recipe to make a hummus quesadilla. Well, I didn't have Breakfast Hummus. But I had some hummus from the store and some leftover Black Rice Wraps (that aren't great for anything except quesadillas because they tear when they fold). I made a quick Hummus Quesadilla with classic Sabra hummus, tomato slices, and very thinly sliced red onion. This made a nice light lunch with some chips.

Once a month, we have catered lunchtime staff meetings at work. There are always vegan options! This month, we did Indian food from India Palace. There were Samosas (yum!!!) and a great Potato-Chickpea Salad. The vegetarian main dishes contained milk, but I had some frozen Indian Masala Bean Soup at home. I live just down the road from work, so I ran over and grabbed that to eat with my Basmati Rice. This is an awful picture because my clear plate was on top of my laptop.

My friend Andy's birthday was a couple weeks ago, and he's soooo not vegan. His favorite restaurant is Shoney's (yea, the chain). And THAT's where he wanted to go for his birthday. Well, as you might imagine, Shoney's is not very vegan-friendly. Even the spaghetti has meat sauce! But I looked up the menu ahead of time and saw that they have a salad bar and a baked potato. So I packed some things in my purse to dress up that potato. I brought my own black beans, cashew cheese, salsa verde, and chives. Made quite a nice dinner.

The salad bar wasn't terribly exciting, but it did have lots of veggies, balsamic vinegar and oil, and those crunchy chow mein noodles. I also packed some nooch in my bag, so I added that to my salad. With a little creativity, vegans can eat anywhere!

I'll be back tomorrow with more random meals — mostly restaurant stuff.